Participants: Thanos, Imhof, Agalioti, Orlando

The recruitment by TFs to specific sites in the genome of associated co-factors with enzymatic activities that use chromatin or DNA as a substrate, elicits a series of events that result in histone tail modification, or replacement by histone variants, nucleosome disruption, DNA methylation etc. These changes in chromatin structure have an immediate impact on gene activity and also serve to “imprint” states of gene activity (or inactivity) to subsequent generations of differentiated cells thus constituting a cellular memory mechanism. The objective of this thematic part of the InteGeR ITN is to investigate how histone variants, specialized chromatin domains and DNA methylation provide mechanisms for gene regulation and epigenetic cellular memory in cell differentiation.

Specific projects:

•    Global roles of macroH2A in gene regulation during ES cell differentiation (Thanos)
•    Characterization of the inactive X Chromatome (Imhof)
•    Constructing the Epigenome: targeting the DNA methylation apparatus to the mouse genome (Agalioti)
•    Role of genome 3D organization and nuclear noncoding RNA metabolism in the epigenetic regulation of cell identity (Orlando)

Contribution of Industrial and Associated partners